war

Draft GPLv3

Here is a copy of a mail about the GPLv3 process:

The first draft of the GPLv3 is now available at http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft

This means that a global discussion has begun. The FSF expects to receive several thousand comments on the draft. Coordinating all these comments will be a challenging task indeed. A unified single point of coordination is percieved as necessary for this.

As the FSF web site for the GPLv3 is now operational and ready to accept comments in a way that will make this process much smoother for everyone involved, we will close this list down and ask everyone with an interest in the license to sign up at:

http://gplv3.fsf.org/

In case you are interested in general discussions on Free Software, our mailing list discussion@fsfeurope.org will remain available for that.

Best regards,
Georg Greve
FSFE, President

Posted on by mklang

Yahoo! & the Nazi auctions

A story which seems to drag on forever now is closed?

The auction site ran by Yahoo was ordered by a French court to stop providing auctions of Nazi memorabilia to the french public in violation to French law. Yahoo! stopped since their French assests were threatened but then compained that their rights to free speech were being violated by the French.

This case was an excellent example of a culture clash. It provides a look at the difference between European and US free speech regulation. Whether corporation should have speech rights. Whether free speech means speech without any limitations. American legislation tends to grant speech rights to corporations and is disinclined to limit free speech – nomatter the cost. European law (if there is such a thing) tends not to grant speech rights to corportations and is very much inclined to limit speech rights.
The case also demands a re-appraisal of the view that the Internet cannot be controlled by governments. It shows that the US cannot control the internet through its legislation.

It also shows the different approach a multi-national corporation takes towards governments. The difference between Yahoo!’s attitude to the French compared to the Chinese governments is an excellent example of the way in which multinationals act.

Anyway Yahoo! has now lost its lawsuit were it claims that the French courts violated the companies rights to sell Nazi memorabilia. The Yahoo! Case has been a central part of cyberlaw since 2000 – is it all over now?
Source: The Register

Posted on by mklang

iTunes Spyware

Apple updated to iTunes 6.0.2 and states that the update “includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.1.”

But Apple didnt bother to mention that the update comes with a default spyware provision. The iTunes MiniStore watches what you click on in iTunes and sends that information across the Web to a remote server. Source since1968.com

The MiniStore can be easily disabledâ??just hit Shift-Command-M, or choose Edit: Hide MiniStore, and itâ??s gone. Once hidden, no more data is transmitted…Disable the MiniStore, and your private listening habits will stay just thatâ??private. (MacWorld)

The purpose of sending the information is to be able to recommend new stuff but this is still not a good excuse to make the spyware a default.

Posted on by mklang

Trust & ATM

While I realise that the ATM runs on software, the full implications of this did not hit me until today when I had to wait until the ATM rebooted. Looking at the whole booting up sequence for NT 4 and seeing it do a virus scan did not really fill me with confidence towards the machine. In addition to this the ATM boot procedure stopped a long time with a view of the classic windows desktop with the icons for my documents and internet explorer showing.

ATM

The moral of the story is that the less you know the more you are able to trust. This means that trust is inversly proportional to the amount of relevant information. In other words if you talk about how secure a system is then you force people to become concerned with security when they really did not consider the system to be insecure. Showing the NT4 boot and the virus scan is obviously not done to inspire confidence but seeing it happen made me think about the vunerability of these systems.

Posted on by mklang

Warhol Foundation on Copyright

Lessig has written (in Wired) about the Warhol foundation’s application of copyright law. Joel Wachs, the president of the foundation says:

“We’re Lessig when it comes to artists and scholars” and “Disney when it comes to commercial use.”

Basically they allow artists to build upon Warhol’s work and academics to use his work for a nominal fee. But are tough on commercial use. This is in keeping with Warhol’s idea of art. Borrow from your surroundings and use it.

More and more I find this the right way to go. Commenting on our surroundings should be permissable – the only real prohibition should be plagiarism. Only copying without adding does not provide anything new.

Partly this position may come from the fact that I teach and many students dont realise what plagiarism is. I have even had students get angry with me when I uncovered their cheats. In the worst case a student attempted to pass off my work as his.

The word plagiarism comes from latin and refers to the activity of stealing anothers slaves. The roman poet Martialis wrote:

The book which you are reading aloud is mine, Fidentinus; but, while you read it so badly, it begins to be yours.
– Epigrams (bk. I, ep. 38)

Oh, and before any of my students come across this and ask: NO bad plagiarism does not make your work original even if you can cite Martialis!

Posted on by mklang

Happy Phd Writer?

In his work Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus writes about the meaning of life and basically the question why we do not commit suicide. The first sentance says it all: “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

Camus takes the myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for life. Sisyphus was a smart man who managed to trick the god of the underworld to let him go back for a brief errend. Once Sisyphus gets home he refuses to return to Hades – eventually he is forced back. As a punishment he is forced to role a huge stone up a hill only to have it role down again and Sisyphus must start again from the begining.

Sisyphus rock

This is usally seen as the pointless and depressing work. However Camus finishes his book with the words:

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The strugg le itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Right now I am spending long days in front of the computer attempting to reach the big deadline (see counter to the right) and hand in my Phd thesis. Its tiring and not very uplifting. At times very pointless. At this stage I am prepared to disagree with Camus. Sisyphus is not happy. He has no time for hapiness and no chance of free time to look forward to.

Posted on by mklang

Art of War

The UK National Archives has an exhibition on wartime propaganda called The Art of War.
The Ministry of Information (MOI) was formed on September 4th 1939, the day after Britain’s declaration of war. The MOI was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda in the Second World War. The initial functions of the MOI were threefold: news and press censorship; home publicity; and overseas publicity in Allied and neutral countries.


warprop
 
This one is called “Grotesque Italian, German and Japanese characters” Artist unknown, dated at possibly September 1940.

Grotesque Italian, German and Japanese characters, shouting into a microphone. Mussolini definitely represents the Italians, for the Nazis â?? possibly Goering, and for the Japanese, possibly Yosuke Matsuoka, who signed the Tripartite Pact which established the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis on September 26 1940.

Posted on by mklang

You know you're a Phd student when…

* you can identify universities by their internet domains.
* you have difficulty reading anything that doesn’t have footnotes.
* you understand jokes about Foucault.
* the concept of free time scares you.
* you’ve ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied.
* Saturday nights spent studying no longer seem weird.
* you can read course books and cook at the same time.
* you find yourself citing sources in conversation.
* your office is better decorated than your apartment.
* you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read.
* you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar.
* you rate coffee shops by the availability of outlets for your laptop.
* you look forward to summers because you’re more productive without the distraction of classes.
* professors don’t really care when you turn in work anymore.
* you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text.
* you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area.
* you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation.
* you often wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy.
* you have more photocopy cards than credit cards.
* you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle.
Basically you are underqualified, overburdened and eternally in the dark…

for comfort there is Piled Higher & Deeper.

Posted on by mklang

A book…

“A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.”

Umberto Eco – Name of the Rose

rose

Posted on by mklang

Minister of (in)Justice – part 2

Sweden has never had a Minister of Justice who has managed to push through so much legislation hostile to civil liberties in such a short space of time as the minister we have today: Thomas Bodström. Here are some of the highlights
Dagens Nyheter 22 December 2005.

Phone tapping – Secret surveillance with hidden microphones will be permissable for a long list of crimes (not only the present day murder, manslaughter and armed robbery. This is despite the fact that investigators have been unable to show whether these devices are efficient police tools.

Data retention – Sweden has stood on the forefront demanding that the EU implement data retention. The EU have now approved rules (BBC report) that will force ISP’s and other telecommunication companies to retain data for at least six months. This data includes the time, date and locations of both mobile and landline calls (as well as whether or not they were answered) along with logs of internet activity and email.

Hemlig telefonavlyssning. En regeringsutredning vill ge Säkerhetspolisen utökade möjligheter till hemlig teleavlyssning. Den ska ske även i “preventivt syfte”, alltsÃ¥ innan ett brott har begÃ¥tts. Enligt förslaget ska ocksÃ¥ den öppna polisen ges utökade möjligheter att registrera svenskarnas telefonsamtal, vilket Advokatsamfundets generalsekreterare Anne Ramberg kallar för “ett paradigmskifte i svensk tvÃ¥ngsmedelshantering”.

Den påtänkta lagstiftningen ger staten kraftigt utökade möjligheter att övervaka medborgarna. Tillämpningsområdet är ytterst brett och möjligheterna till ett rättssäkert förfarande minimala. Både Säpo och polisen skulle ges laglig rätt att kontinuerligt avlyssna miljöer som de finner intressanta. Varken någon lag­överträdelse eller konkret misstanke krävs.

Försvarets underrättelseverksamhet. En departementspromemoria föreslår att den traditionella signalspaningen ska utvidgas till att omfatta all trådbunden trafik som passerar Sveriges gränser. Försvaret ska alltså inte som i dag bara kunna övervaka etern, utan också telefonsamtal, e-post, fax och dylikt som strömmar genom landet naturligtvis utan domstolsprövning. Förslaget innebär ett genombrott för övervakningsstaten, särskilt om det kombineras med tankarna på att försvaret även ska hantera vissa polisiära uppgifter.

Secret Data Surveillance – A proposal has been put forward that will allow the police (with a court order) can enter and insert software to eavesdrop on individuals computers.

These are just a few of the ideas which have been pushed through on the ministers initiative or suggestion. There are many more examples of tough stances against civil liberties – all done to fight crime or terrorism.

handcuffs

Sweden is no longer the country fighting for rights and liberties but it is using the ghost of terrorism to frighten and bully through oppressive legislation. Leadership by fear. In addition to this the approach has been to argue that oppressive legislation actually improves civil liberties. In a comment on the recent data retention decision a fellow party official stated that data retention protects civil liberties. Swedish quote here – “Jag är tacksam och glad att vi fÃ¥r en gemensam lagstiftning för hela Europa. Det här är ocksÃ¥ garantin för att integriteten och de mänskliga rättigheterna inte Ã¥sidosätts, säger Inger Segelström, s”.

This is straight out of Orwell! Remember: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. Big Brother would have been proud.

Posted on by mklang